President Obama is One Lousy Socialist!

In the 84 years that the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has been calculated, it doubled during the terms of only four presidents before Barack Obama’s election in 2008. This month that number rose to five as the index climbed to more than twice what it was when he took office.

That’s right, folks, the S&P 500 is up 105% since the President took office, way more than most of the presidents on the list below. And yes, he started from a low base, the Fed’s been goosing the markets, and there’s not nearly as much connective tissue between presidents and stock markets in the first place.

But as the sayin’ goes, I’m just sayin’…

Go ahead and subtract 10% inflation off of that 105% (that’s the growth in the CPI over this period) and you still have the stock market crushing the growth of the weekly paycheck of the typical worker, up 0.8% in real terms over these years. That’s not a typo…not 8%, but 0.8%. Less than 1%. (That’s the increase in the real weekly earnings since Dec 2008 of blue collar manufacturing workers and non-managers in services.)

And that’s not Obama’s fault either—he’s proposed a lot of good ideas to improve the job market, lower unemployment, and boost paychecks. But Congressional conservatives have blocked them, while busily protecting the wealthy from tax cuts and financial market regulations.

But man, with socialists like that, who needs capitalists?

Update: Had a rich [sic] discussion of this issue on MSNBC’s Alex Witt show this afternoon (link forthcoming) wherein I found myself referencing this post.

6 comments in reply to "President Obama is One Lousy Socialist!"

The 400 richest people in America are wealthier than the combined total of the bottom 189,000,000 Americans. These 400 individuals are the 1% of the 1% of the 1% — and you can fit them all on one Boeing 747 commercial jet. See the video I posted here:

The 20 richest of those 400 people have a net worth of over ½ trillion dollars. Imagine the dimensions of a football field stacked 5 feet high with $100 dollar-bills. That’s $500 billion dollars. 20 people could buy 2,000 Boeing 747s. See what this stack of cash looks like at my post here:

Uh, socialists don’t really care about the stock market. There are other economic indicators that are a lot more important–median income, wages, poverty rates and so on–that really determine the quality of life for the vast majority.

As for Obama doing something about these issues–he had plenty of time before the Republicans took the House, but spent his time making sure that no bankers went to jail.